Prepare Your Home for Fall

Did you notice the leaves changing colors and you have slowly been adding more layers to your outfits? It's that time of the year again; the time where you dreadfully are aware that winter is upon us. Here are some ways you can prepare your home for fall.

1. It's important to always think of that one way you keep warm in your house every winter: the furnace. Without heat you are going to be pretty miserable, so to avoid being miserable look up your favorite professional that will inspect your furnace and provide you with the comfort in knowing you will stay warm and cozy this winter. It's always best to hire a professional instead of trying to inspect your furnace yourself so you know it is working as efficiently and effectively as possible.

2. One thing you can do for your furnace is change the filter. A fresh filter will help your furnace run smoothly as well.

3. If you have a fireplace, make sure you have a professional clean the chute and make sure nothing is clogging the fireplace as well. You will want your fireplace to produce a warm atmosphere, not a smoky and hazardous atmosphere.

4. Do a home safety check. This means checking all of the smoke and CO detectors, fire extinguishers should be full and get rid of any fire dangers such as old newspaper. Making your home as safe as possible should always be a priority. Your home needs to be prepared for fall before it becomes an issue.

5. Make sure outside is safe as well. Gutters can easily get clogged from all of the falling leaves as well as downspouts. You don't want to be dealing with anything outdoors such as your gutters when it's the middle of winter and a blizzard is blowing through.

6. Inspect your roof for any leaks, damage and corrossion. A faulty roof can be a huge problem in the winter time, so make sure that none of the summer storms caused any substantial damage.

These are just a few of the ways you can prepare your home for fall. Fall is a great time of the year and a time where you should be spending your time carving pumpkins, going to corn mazes and other fun events, not a time where you should be dealing with issues because you ignored them to begin with!

Do you sleep walk?

Do you or somebody you know suffer from sleep walking? Sleep walking is a serious issue because it can cause harm. Although mostly children suffer from sleep walking, adults can also have the problem as well. Let's learn more about sleep walking.

Approximately 15% of children between 4-12 years of age will experience sleepwalking. Genetic tendencies could be the cause, but scientists are not positive that genetics have anything to do with sleep walking. It is also much more likely to occur if a person is sleep deprived because when they are sleep walking they remain in a deep sleep, so when someone is sleep deprived it makes it harder to wake them.

Most people do not remember sleep walking. Since it is a deep sleep, other complex behaviors can happen such as talking and sitting up in bed. Many people have been told not to wake a sleep walker as it could be dangerous, but it can be even more dangerous not to wake a sleep walker.

Between 1 and 15% of people sleep walk. There is no association with psychiatric or psychological problems, but common triggers include sleep deprivation, sedative agents, febrile illness and certain medications.


Sleep walkers might also experience:

• Sleeptalking
• Little or no memory of the event
• Difficulty arousing the sleepwalker during an episode
• Inappropriate behavior such as urinating in closets (more common in children)
• Screaming (when sleepwalking occurs in conjunction with sleep terrors) 

So what can you do if you or someone you know are suffering from sleep walking? There is no treatment, but working to improve your sleeping is one way to alleviate sleep walking.  Talking to your doctor about ways to prevent injuries and what could be the underlying issue will help you treat sleep walking.

American Down and Feather can help you find the best products to provide you with the best night of sleep possible! Contact us today.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

I'm sure you've heard of it by now - the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It's a great way to raise money for a terrible disease and everyone is posting their videos up on Facebook. If you haven't seen them yet, a few great ones to watch are Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Pratt, Conan O'Brien and Bill Gates. Those are just some videos to give you a feel for what the Ice Bucket Challenge is although anybody can do it!

So what is ALS? ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. ALS eventually leads to death when the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. Patients in later stages may become totally paralyzed when voluntary muscle action is affected. Jean-Martin Charcot found the disease in 1869, but it wasn't brought to attention until 1939 when it ended the career of Lou Gehrig, a famous baseball player.


This disease does not have a cure which is why so many people have participated in the Ice Bucket Challenge. If you haven't, do the Ice Bucket Challenge, donate to http://www.alsa.org/about-als/ and upload your video to Facebook! Share with American Down and Feather so we can see them all!

Why is Denver so great?

Denver, Colorado is known for many great things. Awesome outdoor activities, amazing weather, incredible craft beer and the economy is only improving. Let's talk more about what makes Denver such a great place for you.

1. If you like sports then Denver is the place for you. Not only does Denver have the great Broncos NFL team, but they actually do have four major sports teams including the Avalanche, Nuggets and Rockies. There's also two professional lacrosse teams to entertain you as well.

2. For music lovers, there is no better place to go for a concert than Red Rocks. Just a little outside of Denver, Red Rocks hosts many famous musicians as well as comedians, movies, work out groups and even church services.

3. The food is phenomenal. Denver is known for the green chili which is used makin hatch chiles from New Mexico and typically comes smothering a burrito or tamale.

4. Mentioned earlier, Denver is known for its craft beer. Many cities have the saying that you can't walk a block without running into a Starbucks or McDonalds, well in Denver the saying is that you cant walk a block without running into a brewery. You really can't go wrong with any of them either.

5. Just as there are breweries, there are parks as well! Denverites love to spend time outdoors and if they can't make it to the mountains there is still a numerous amount of parks that you can go to whether it's for a good workout, play some sports, have a picnic or just spend some time outside reading a book.

6. Love riding your bike? Denver has the Cherry Creek Bike Path which is a 40-mile route that starts Downtown Denver and goes all over to suburbs such as Aurora, Centennial and Parker.

Have you fallen in love with Denver yet?! If you haven't, consider the museums, the mountains that are oh-so-close, and the great variety of people that you'll meet. Denver is a mecca for greatness and will continue to be so as it grows. We're proud to be a Denver-based business!

Cities with the most sleep

Everywhere you live there is a different lifestyle. Whether you live somewhere where people go on hikes after work or you live somewhere where you find there is nowhere to go spend time outside so you spend the time watching television. A new study just came out showing what cities get the most amount of sleep.

Jawbone, the makers of UP, which is a digitized wristband tracking how users move and sleep, released a new dataset to determine who gets the most sleep. Melbourne is where people get the most sleep with Tokyo getting the least amount of sleep. Overall, Americans just need more sleep overall.

Although Up users might not show are very accurate reading, it can show that people tend to need more sleep. What else did this study reveal?

People in areas with a large population like New York have a grid-routine where they get up early on weekdays, move little during the day and sleep in more on weekends. They go to bed later every weekday and go to sleep the earliest on Sundays. Orlando and Beijing there is a distinction between how users sleep on weekends and weekdays compared to places such as New York. 

Do you think that where you live determines how much sleep you get every day? 

Waking up Sore

You know there has been at least one time that you have woken up after a whole night of sleeping full of aches and pains. Waking up sore is a terrible feeling and there are many reasons for you to wake up feeling sore. Here are some of those reasons you might be waking up sore.

1. Illness is largely a reason to wake up sore, or to feel sore in general. When you come down with a cold or the flu your body is trying to fight to get you back to healthy mode. This means your body is never fully resting, hence the feeling of being sore when you wake up.

2. Exercise can oftentimes cause you to wake up feeling sore as well. Although this is a soreness that you generally feel great about, it can be annoying to feel sore after having a great workout session. This soreness will go away once your body gets used to you working out.

3. Anxiety can also cause you to wake up feeling sore. Many of us suffer from anxiety for a wide variety of reasons such as our jobs, finances, relationships and more. Anxiety can cause your muscles to tighten up, giving you a sore feeling after a night of sleep.

4. An underlying disease can also cause soreness in the morning. Fibromyalgia is a common cause of soreness, which is a chronic widespread pain that a doctor can help you diagnose. A vitamin deficiency and sleep disorders can also cause you to wake up not feeling well rested.

If you are consistently waking up sore, talking to your doctor is the best way to go about solving the problem at hand. It could be any one of the issues stated above, but before you jump to conclusions analyze your daily routine and see if you can find what could be causing the issue to begin with. 

Great Apps to Improve your Sleep

We're all attached to our phones. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. We use our phones for work, to keep in touch with long distance family and friends, check our social media accounts and play games. Maybe you also use your phone to track your nutrition, read the news and for your daily routines. Another reason to use your phone is to help improve your sleep. Here is a list of great apps to improve your sleep.

1. Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock. We've all heard it a million times: getting into a sleep cycle is one of the best ways to ensure you feel well rested. This app analyzes and graphs your sleep quality, lets you add sleep notes and wakes up at your lightest sleep time by using soft tones to wake you. Now doesn't that sound great?! For the real deal, it'll cost you 99 cents, but you can find trial apps and ones like it for free.

photo credit: http://www.justbedding.com.au/blog/could-your-iphone-help-you-to-sleep-better/

2. Sleep. By using soothing lullabies and relaxing music, this app will help release all of the tensions from the day and relax your mind. This one also costs 99 cents.

3. Feeling like an insomniac? Insomnia Cure has all of the information you need to help battle insomnia from learning tips and tools that will help you form a stress-free natural sleep. A little more costly, but rated highly, this will cost you $2.99.

4. Sleep Pillow. This white noise app has 70 high-quality sounds such as bubbling streams, wind chimes, rain and much more. You can mix any of these into personalized combinations to help calm you into a great sleep. This app runs at $1.99, with a trial run that is free!

These four apps will help you improve your sleep, all at a cost lower than trying a new thing and having it not work for you. Everybody has their own method to improving their sleep, finding what works best for you is the sure way to do it! Keep in mind most of these apps do offer free trial periods, so you don't have to buy until you know that's what you want. Happy sleeping!